November 5, 2009

I'm doing things a bit differently this year - and a bit later, ah well. I'm not going to summarize everything I went to and everything that happened - there are plenty of places to read about the conference. Instead I'm just going to touch on highlights, things that worked well for me or made me groove. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Meeting with my mentor Stephen for a nice chat about future possibilities.

The Digital Library Practices track on Monday, especially the session on visualization and virtualization. (Not the same thing at all, but they got put together into one session.) I'm looking forward to trying out Graphviz, the open-source tool used by the UNReno folks.

I really enjoy Paul Holdengraber's passion and humor, and his keynote interview with Erik Boekesteijn was great. (And thanks SO much to the Shanachies for all the streaming video they did throughout the conference!)

Meeting my Drupal guru in person. At last! You rock, Cary.

Having lunch - including buffalo artichoke hearts, nom! - with my most awesome book editor Rachel.

Rockin' Battle Decks. I haven't laughed that hard at a conference session in a really, really long time. (and there are too librarians in the desert! Ha!)

Bluff the Internet Librarian at the closing keynote. Cracked me up - both the way the speakers presented it (quiz show style) and the amazing-but-real things used as the quiz items. Who knew?!?

Last but far, far from least: Library 101. Really, Michael Porter and David Lee King are just amazing in their creativity, and if even a quarter of us can channel some of their energy and enthusiasm for libraries into our own arenas, we will KICK BUTT. (If you haven't seen their earlier video presentation "Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Library", go watch that too.)

Farewell for this year, Monterey and IL. I'll see you again next year.